How a few choice words can change worlds within and without
• by Geoff Olson
• The world appears to be on a knife-edge again, with leaders from Tel Aviv to Tehran playing out idiotic games of brinkmanship better suited to pre-war Europe than the whistle-blowing world of WikiLeaks and Anonymous. To write about poetry in this context may seem...

by Helen Papaconstantinos BA, CNP, RNCP
• Could Canada’s younger generations be expected to live shorter lives than their parents because of obesity? It is a chilling thought, but over the last 25 years, Statistics Canada reports have shown a considerable increase in the percentage of children and adolescents who are overweight and obese.
At the root...

DRUG BUST by Alan Cassels
The people's briefing note on prescription drugs
• Psst. Hey kid, try one of these. It’s really good stuff.
Thus goes the standard pitch of the schoolyard pusher, selling the benefits of the product – so to speak – and expanding his market. What he seeks is a happy client who will hopefully come back for more....

by Ken Peters
• Just so we are clear, I love the planet and believe we are fast destroying it. I believe that debating global warming is a brilliant piece of sleight-of-hand by business. We used to just call it pollution and it was clearly bad; now they’ve got us debating global warming while we continue to rape the land and foul the oceans worse...

How Wall Street & the Fed fleeced the U.S.
by Senator Bernie Sanders
• As a result of the greed, recklessness and illegal behaviour on Wall Street, the American people have experienced the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. Millions of Americans, through no fault of their own, have lost their jobs, homes, life savings and the ability to...

SCIENCE MATTERS by David Suzuki
• It’s been 20 years since Canada’s East Coast cod fishery collapsed and we still have no recovery target or timeline for rebuilding populations. That’s just one finding in a damning report from a panel of eminent Royal Society of Canada marine scientists. “Sustaining Canada’s Marine...

FILMS WORTH WATCHING by Robert Alstead
• On March 17, it will be six months since the beginning of Occupy Wall Street and the subsequent cascade of grassroots occupations that followed across the Western world. Two local filmmakers who have been documenting the Occupy movement – from the Arab Spring, through Zuccotti Park to the Vancouver Art...

UNIVERSE WITHIN by Gwen Randall-Young
“What you think of me is none of my business.” – Terry Cole-Whittaker
• It is amazing when we stop to think how much of our culture is based on what people think of us or more importantly what we think they think of us or what we want them to think of us. Fashion magazines, beauty products,...

ON THE GARDEN PATH by Carolyn Herriot
According to Carolyn Steel, author of Hungry City: How Food Shapes our Lives, supplying cities with food is one of the most important issues on the planet. Her TED lecture starts off showing how people living in cities in the past used to feed themselves and what happened when cities expanded. As cities grew, food production...

NUTRISPEAK by Vesanto Melina
• The kitchen has traditionally been the heart of the home, a powerful space to generate physical, mental, emotional and spiritual well-being.
– Chef Joseph Forest
• Some of us follow recipes to the letter. If directions say to whisk the sauce and we have a fork but no whisk, we turn to another recipe. Others refer...